1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to a reinforcement for cloth, and more particularly to a corner reinforcement with an integral eyelet for use with fabric tents and the like.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Conventionally, a fabric tent is pitched with the aid of a plurality of tent poles and ropes in such a manner that it is set up by erecting the tent poles, stretching ropes connected to individual corners of the tent and tying these ropes to tent pegs. In order to connect the ropes to the corners of the tent, the tent is generally provided at its corners with rope holes which are reinforced with grommets, preferably made of metal or plastic materials.
However, since each of the ropes 21 is always stretched in a direction in order to maintain the tensioned shape of the tent as depicted in FIG. 1, the grommet 22 is pulled in the same direction and this causes the woven cloth 11 about the rope hole to be deformed and ravelled. In this regard, this type of rope hole has a disadvantage in that the reinforcing grommet 22 provided at the rope hole easily comes off.
In an effort to solve this disadvantage, U.S. Pat. No. 4,777,071 proposed a stitchless reinforced corner structure for cloth. As depicted in FIGS. 2 to 4, this U.S. patent discloses a folding reinforcement 30 provided at a corner of a woven cloth 11 for preventing the deformation and ravelling of the cloth 11 about its rope hole. In application, this reinforcement 30 is added on a bottom surface of the corner of the woven cloth 11, and thereafter, folded at both flaps thereof to cover an upper surface of the corner in such a manner that two rope holes 31 of the reinforcement 30 overlap with the corresponding hole of the cloth 11. At this state, a conventional reinforcing grommet 22 is attached to the overlapped holes 31.
This type of corner structure, while somewhat preventing the grommet from coming off, nevertheless has a disadvantage in that it has the folding structure, which bears anxiety of being released under the possible excessive load, and keeps on requiring separate reinforcing grommets, thereby reducing the productivity.